A prominent Conservative Party peer criticised the Budget yesterday for failing to do enough to kick-start economic growth as he called for investment in infrastructure.

Lord Wolfson of Aspley Guise, the chief executive of Next, said: “There didn’t seem to be any needle-moving measures. There is a lot more that could be done to stimulate growth.”

A former adviser on competitiveness to the Tories, he pointed out the difficulties that planning regulations cause for businesses trying to expand and said that the Government should make the system easier.

Lord Wolfson, who was among 35 entrepreneurs who wrote to George Osborne